Today this space will be handed over to someone to tell their story of living with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DiD). It wasn’t something that I had come across before, so it felt like a privilege to be invited to listen. For a little bit of background, DiD is also sometimes known as multiple personality disorder, and it is characterised by at least two distinct and relatively enduring personality states. Because of the sensitive nature of some of their experience they asked to be anonymous at this point

In this conversation with Simon he talks about his experience with depression and access to statutory mental health services, the fear we have of death and the damage that causes, and the impact we are having on the planet.

In my chat with Hen we talked about the concept of slowing down and of slo-working. We talked about the importance of finding your own rhythm in life, we talked about our mutual interest in living in vans, and living in vans in car parks, and the pros and cons that go with it. We talked about minimal living, and we also talked about breaking through barriers of fear and the power of community.

Rik and I chatted about slowing down and how to avoid burning out at work. It’s a topic that keeps coming up as I talk to people about their mental health. If you’ve listened to podcast #2 you’ll remember my chat with James from Sanctus on a similar topic. It’s just so prevalent. The pressure to work hard and fast is so prevalent in our culture, that people feel like they have no other option that to work long hours, and constantly strive for growth at speed.

In this episode I went along to meet Laurence McCahill, who along with his lifelong friend Carlos Saba, founded the Happy Startup School in Brighton. Their mission is to help people to connect with their true passions and hopefully avoid a lot of the problems I just mentioned. They do this through events such as their annual Summer Camp in the UK, Alptitude, and event in which they take entrepreneurs to the alps, Ashram, their retreat to India, which Laurence touches upon in our conversation, and many other smaller events and workshops throughout the year.